Timothy Lawler said:
bleyrad, would you call the brain a physical system?
Tim
This is gonna get way off topic, but I'll bite.
In one sense, yes for sure.
In another sense, yes and I don't know.
Let me explain. In the first sense I mean that even if there is something non-computationally-based going on in terms of our consiousness, it holds the potential to be explained. In other words, even if we have a soul (and I must stress that no one really knows either way, and current evidence is pointing towards our consiousness simply being a grand illusion by the sum of the brain's processes upon itself) this is potentially explainable. That is, if we had enough information about what was going on, we should be able to figure out what consiousness is and how this "soul" works. We don't currently have enough information, and we might NEVER have enough information, but that doesn't mean it's not a scientifically valid process. Everything in this universe IS, simply because it exists (or doesn't exist). Such is the nature of science.
In the second sense of my answer, I can back up my confident "yes" part by saying that we already know a great deal about how the brain works. It's essentially a very complex digital bioelectrical processor. Each neuron is a "transistor" which affects the potential of other connected neurons to either fire or not fire. The ends of the train lay at our sensory input, like sight and touch, and our motor outputs, such as movement and speech. Input-output. And somewhere in between is a huge amount of processes that, when put together, form the (possible) illusion known as consiousness. Note that as soon as you change any of the way these sensory processes and neurons fire or inhibit from firing, your perception of what consiousness is changes. I'm talking about mind-altering drugs, some of which our own body produces! All it takes are a few chemicals setting off neurons and changing the whole of the process to look at yourself and the world in a completely different way - in a sense, changing the nature of consiousness itself.
This is where the "I don't know" part of my answer comes from. I don't know, because no one knows, exactly what consiousness is or what causes it. I have my guesses, as does everyone else. What bothers me though is people who claim to know the answer for certain (which is a lot of people). The only wise thing to do right now is tolerate our uncertainty towards this matter. Anything else is self-deception. There is no evidence or proper information towards any other answer.
I have problems with faith-based answers because faith is such a finnicky thing and IMO not to be trusted. Everyone strongly, strongly feels that theirs is the correct answer, right to their very bones... yet many of these "answers" conflict deeply. I hate this example but it works: Hitler felt strongly that whites were the most superior human beings, strongly enough to massacre millions of those who weren't. We're talking about an even stronger conviction and certainty in his beliefs than many religious folk have in theirs today.
As soon as we apply very basic logic to his actions though, they come out wrong and irrational. Such is the case with all faith, unfortunately. The only thing it's done is hold us back, and it's only within the past few hundred years that we've moved beyond that into something far less biased (the scientific method). It's a pity that so many people are automatically distrusting of science, repeating the mistakes of generations and generations of anscentors with
internally-based beliefs that sometimes stand in the way of true knowledge.
